Opening Credits…

Here’s an oldie from 14 years ago… times have changed… It’s meaningless to us today, but I thought it was too funny not to share.

Program of study sheets, program handbooks, flyers for programs, informational session flyers about programs… we have a lot of these.

And 95% of the time they are completely outdated and clash with the catalog. Or they’re not deleted from the system after they’ve expired.

All of these types of documents are tedious and difficult to make 508 compliant (especially handbooks).

Often, they duplicate content found in our catalog or through our admissions pages. And as quickly as things change regarding admission processes, unfortunately, our documents do not keep up.

But the BIGGEST issue with ANY document or PDF available for download on our sites is accessibility. Go ahead… run that 50 page PDF through an accessibility checker (unless you did your due diligence and made it accessile).

Solution

Let’s build web pages out of them (if they’re worthy). Otherwise, use them as they are intended to be – given to current students as print-outs or in their Banner or iCollege area where they would log in to get their course work. Current students do not look for these things on our website unless they are told they are there. But as our analytics show, they’re not downloading them.

There’s also no reason for handbooks and program pages to be on program cards when prospective students are searching for a program. And they definitely should not have content from the catalog or our admissions pages embedded in them.

Either create a webpage from a flyer or do what’s best – post them on the walls of your campus or litter the over-used bulletin boards at campus kiosks but do not consider a flyer as something to use digitally. They are usually unaccessible and people do not download them.